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Kodi 18 'Leia' 64-Bit For Windows Is Finally Ready To Replace the 32-bit Version (betanews.com)
BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: Earlier this year, we shared with you that a pre-release version of Kodi 18 "Leia" 64-bit for Windows was available. There was a big catch, however -- it was not up to par with its 32-bit brother. And so, many people just stuck with the 32-bit version, because, well... why not? It is finally time to make the jump to the 64-bit variant, however, as according to the Kodi team, it is now identical to the 32-bit version from a feature perspective. "The 64-bit Kodi version for Windows is now feature complete and on the same level as 32-bit. From now on the 32-bit installer will include a warning to ask you to install the 64-bit instead. This upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit version is seamless and you just need to install on top of the old version," says Kodi.
Why the fuck does this link to some hearsay on a third party site? The only link needed is the link to the official announcement on the official Kodi site.
Brian Fagioli really is a fagioli.
Editors: Could you not once during the lame summary have mentioned exactly what Kodi is? It's like slashdot is being written by one guy sitting at his high school lunch table for the other guys sitting at the same table.
Not everyone uses it to watch pirated content. I use it as a "jukebox" to play my (legally purchased) collection of FLAC audio files from about 2500 CD's I purchased over the years and piped through my home theater audio system. Tucked all on a cheap Intel NUC with all the content stored on an internal M.2 SSD. It works great!
Some people, sure, but Kodi has a shitton more features and Plex is kinda like a toy in comparison. I mean, with Kodi you can adjust audio/video sync on-the-fly, subtitle-sync on-the-fly, enable/disable audio-passthrough and the format it uses and all sorts of equalizer-settings and whatnot, you can do 3D-playback and oh so much more. Personally, I really happen to like the Trakt-plugin to it, too, so it automatically tracks all the movies and TV-shows I've watched on there.
Kodi wants to entertain you
Kodi spawned from the love of media. It is an entertainment hub that brings all your digital media together into a beautiful and user friendly package. It is 100% free and open source, very customisable and runs on a wide variety of devices. It is supported by a dedicated team of volunteers and a huge community.
Kodi (formerly known as XBMC) is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub that can be installed on Linux, OSX, Windows, iOS and Android, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls.
It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet. Our forums and Wiki are bursting with knowledge and help for the new user right up to the application developer.
https://kodi.tv/
-Dave
I switched recently from Plex which I had been using forever to Kodi. With the right skin Kodi looks fantastic. The problem is it's not a client/server model like Plex is. You just run Kodi on a client and point it at files somewhere. So you can't do transcoding from the server to the client. And with plex the client can also be a web browser. Chorus2, the kodi web client, is pretty poor and the browser streaming is barely functional and in my experience is dependent on the browser support and media type because there's no transcoding.
But the UI is nice, it's highly configurable and using the shared mysql/maria database you can share your watch status and library between devices (I'm using NVIDIA Shields).
Overall Plex offers a far simpler experience and supports transcoding which opens up some options (streaming to small/mobile devices via the internet) but Plex has gotten pretty shady requiring accounts, almost changing their policy until user backlash and it's not open source. So the whole thing just rubs me the wrong way. I'm willing to put in a little extra elbow grease to get Kodi working well to not support Plex because it works well enough for my use case, which is a couple front ends attached to TVs streaming content from a NAS.
Personally I would say Kodi is more like a toy in comparison to Plex.
Kodi is a CLIENT that displays content stored on SERVERS.
Saying that Kodi is a toy for misunderstanding its role is like saying SSH sucks because the system your connecting to doesn't have enough ram to compile software.
Plex can transcode videos on the fly (or in the background as media is imported) so that only the server needs to be powerful enough to transcode instead of each player.
Or any PVR/NAS with interface supported by Kodi. (Essentially ALL of them of any consequence)
Plex is definitely supported on more devices. It can also put copies on a phone for mobile off-line viewing.
Kodi can be installed on a phone and access all the same shit as your Kodi client on the sub $50 SBC driving the 4k TV.
You can share libraries with other people (Say vacation photos with my dad, etc). It also has an option to put the server in the cloud. Plex also integrates with Trakt via plugin as well.
"The cloud" means Plex's servers. U need an account to do anything with Plex even if all you want is exclusively local.